Nathalie Des Rosiers on Thursday blamed a staffer for tweeting in her name that an Ottawa police officer is a murderer, let the premier’s office speak for her because she was too busy, then found time for a bunch of interviews.

“I’ve had better days,” the Ottawa-Vanier MPP conceded.

The mess began Wednesday night, coinciding with a vigil in memory of Ashton Dickson, the star football player shot to death one month ago after an argument at the Mingle Room bar on Rideau Street. The deaths of young black men are alarming, Des Rosiers tweeted, and we need to “review the entire system” to address them.

Oh, also: “My thoughts are with Abdi’s family & friends murdered by a careless police officer. Be strong!”

The obvious reference is to the case of Abdirahman Abdi, the black man in Hintonburg who died after police answered a call that he was molesting women in a Bridgehead. They chased him to the door of his nearby apartment building and, it is alleged, beat him until he was mortally injured. Const. Daniel Montsion is charged with manslaughter and aggravated assault and has a trial date set in early 2019.

You could hear Liberal PR people screaming from all the way in Toronto.

First, Montsion is not charged with murder. Even the investigators who brought the charges against Montsion don’t say Abdi was murdered. Second, the bigger deal, it assumes Montsion’s guilt before he’s been tried for anything.

“A member of the staff, I think, tweeted without my knowledge and without my approval and I found out only this morning,” Des Rosiers said, and when she did see the tweets on her account she immediately repudiated the sentiment.

This is plausible. A former law dean and chief lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, someone who lived and breathed the presumption of innocence every day for years, wouldn’t suddenly forget and call Montsion a murderer before his trial on non-murder charges.

“I’ve spent my entire life defending that principle. I think it’s appropriate to express condolences to a grieving family, but you cannot and ought not to comment on an ongoing judicial process,” Des Rosiers said.

What’s very likely is that an assistant less versed in this stuff, just perhaps picking up on conversations they’ve had in private, shot the boss’s mouth off without realizing the significance of tweeting such a thing.

Chief Charles Bordeleau piped up. “Mr. Abdi’s death has been difficult for many. We should all respect due process and allow the Court to fulfil it’s (sic) role,” he tweeted in a midnight reply while the original tweets were still online.

Mr. Abdi's death has been difficult for many. We should all respect due process and allow the Court to fulfil it's role. https://t.co/yW1XMmfXe5

A statement ostensibly from Des Rosiers but sent by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s press office followed, meaning the grownups had taken over.

“I have absolute respect for the integrity of our judicial process. In our society everyone is innocent until proven guilty and I apologize that the comments last night did not reflect that principle,” it said. Aside from repeating that Des Rosiers had been betrayed by an incompetent aide, her own people stonewalled interview requests, pleading Des Rosiers’s packed schedule. Then a bunch of time opened up so she could talk after all.

The staffer hasn’t been fired and won’t be, Des Rosiers said.

“We’re going to deal with it and try to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

There is a delicate issue here that mustn’t be obscured by this compost storm.

The presumption of innocence from which Montsion is entitled to benefit is not absolute and universal. It doesn’t mean we’re all required to act as though nothing happened until a court decides it did. The police service has Montsion suspended (with pay) because it’s problematic to have someone accused of a major crime working as a police officer even though he hasn’t been convicted. But the rest of the world can see shades of grey. We can decide that somebody did something wrong even if that act doesn’t turn out to be criminal.

“The issue of how the system responds to any type of violence in the community and the accountability for policing is important. It has to be a system that makes sense and is transparent to everyone,” Des Rosiers said. “That’s why I think it’s particularly important to protect the integrity of the judicial process to make sure there is absolutely no question about the fairness, and to make sure that the correct answers are reached.”

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